SAJAforum

COMICS: Scott Adams understands the importance of Indian funerals

From the June 21, 2009, edition of "Dilbert" by Scott Adams.
 

CARTOON: Nick Anderson on Pakistan

This ran in the Houston Chronicle and other papers on March 27, 2009. Post your comments below. More on Nick Anderson's work at http://blogs.chron.com/nickanderson/

COMICS: "From Batman to Gandhi" at Museum of Comics and Cartoon Arts

One of the more unusual press releases: "From Batman to Gandhi: Three Events at the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Arts (MoCCA)" - including a discussion about "comics from super heroes to the nonviolent." Full press release below.

Post your comments, please.

[As you can see, the original poster had Gandhi spelled as "Ghandi." See our 2007 post about "Ghandi vs Gandhi."

From Batman to Gandhi:
Three Events at the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Arts (MoCCA)  MLK Week

Press Release
Contact:    Karl Erickson or Ellen Abramowitz eabramowitz@moccany.org      
kerickson@moccany.org

From Batman to Gandhi:  Comics from Super Heroes to the Nonviolent

Three Events at the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art, Manhattan--MLK Week:

Jan. 19th, 2-:30pm, Workshop-Urban Empathy: Living with Compassion in the Big Apple

Jan. 22nd 7pm, Moderated Discussion & Launch of Urban Empathy

Jan. 24th 1-3pm, Workshop-Making Comics in Adobe Flash

No other city can boast as many super heroes as New York---Superman, Batman, and Spiderman all play out their larger-than-life adventures in the Big Apple.    Yet what happens when the action figure genre is applied to a different kind of risk and adventure---every day interactions between New Yorkers? And rather than using physical force or finesse---like Superman and Spiderman---it's communication skills to the rescue?

COMICS: Virgin Comics presents a new Panchatantra

Millions of Indian children, in India and abroad, are familiar with the tales of the Panchatantra. These ancient stories are a kind of desi Aesop's fables. Often starring tigers, jackals, elephants and other animals these stories had morals such as: "Wit is superior to brute force" or "Don't listen to the advice of your natural enemy" or "Too much of greed is harmful" (see online versions of these stories, with  almost uniformly poor production values, here and here).

One way in which these stories became popular in recent decades is through comic books such at the Amar Chitra Katha series (a comic imprint with hundreds of titles and easily available online at ACK-media.com). Here, for example is the cover of "How the Jackal Ate the Elephant and other stories."  In a fit of nostalgia, just before my kids were about to be born, I bought about two dozen titles online, including some of the Panchatantra and Jataka tales editions, and as they have grown older, the kids have loved having the comics read to them.

But why should my kids read the same comics I grew up reading? It turns out that Virgin Comics, the Deepak Chopra/Shekhar Kapur/Gotham Chopra/Sharad Devarajan venture that is updating various comics and creating new ones ("Sadhu" is being made into a Nicholas Cage movie), has sets its sights on the Panchatantra.

This new version, called "Panchatantra: The Tall Tales of Vishnu Sharma" is certainly not my kids' father's Panchatantra. Done in the style and sensibility of high-end graphic novel (see examples below and at this link), the result is a rich, deep fascinating story that can keep the attention of today's teens.

From the press release - note they call it a "magazine":

“With Panchatantra The Tall Tales of Vishnu Sharma, we continue our mission of looking to India as a source of innovative creativity with a vault of stories that should be brought to the world,” commented Sharad Devarajan, CEO & Co-Founder of Virgin Comics and Virgin Animation. “The young Indian creators behind this series stand at the forefront of redefining a new golden age in Indian storytelling and shifting the country from being an outsourcer to being the source.”

In Virgin’s new monthly magazine, a nefarious multinational conglomerate is deliberately silencing the mythologies of yesterday. In an effort to stop the erasing of old fables, the characters from the Panchatantra myths emerge from their story-world into modern India to recruit the living descendent of the man who originally created them, a teenage Mumbai native, named Vishnu Sharma. In young Vishnu, they find a teenager consumed with ipods, cell phones, video games and modern entertainment – not exactly the champion of ancient stories they were hoping for.
<snip>
The comic book series is being written by leading Indian fantasy and comic book writer, Samit Basu ("Devi," "The Gameworld Trilogy") and illustrated by rising comic book star, Ashish Padlekar ("Dave Stewart’s Walk-In").

[An aside: I took a copy of the comic, er, magazine, with me to a SAJA event this week and passed it around for the journalists to see. Someone really liked it, because it didn't get my copy back and didn't get to finish it!]

See the full press release below and post your comments.

Journalists interested in review copies on in setting up interviews with the creators should contact PRESS Michelle Gomes, press[at]virgincomics.com

Earlier on SAJAforum: "Virgin Comics to launch teen horror genre in India."

CARTOON: Mallard Fillmore on Call Centers

A cartoon from Bruce Tinsley's "Mallard Fillmore" comic strip (Jan. 14, 2008, distributed by King Features to hundreds of newspapers around the country). For those of you who don't follow the strip, Fillmore is a conservative journalist who happens to be a duck. Post your comments below.

EARLIER ON SAJAforum:

• CARTOON: "One Big Happy" on Outsourcing
• CARTOON:"Watch Your Head" on Outsourcing
• CARTOON: "Mother Goose & Grimm" on Outsourcing
• OUTSOURCING: An Unusual Cartoon about Call Centers (see the 35+ comments, too)

PREZ RACE: Ted Rall cartoon imagines Huckabee as Hindu fundamentalist

[ Resources for 2008 U.S. Presidential Race ]

A cartoon by Ted Rall, whose work is carried by about 100 newspapers (click to magnify). On his blog, he describes it this way:

Today's cartoon responds to the generally respectful tone accorded Mike Huckabee, who does not believe in evolution and is therefore, by definition, a lunatic.

Rall is no stranger to controversy. Wikipedia lists some of his controversial cartoons, including "Terror Widows."

Post your comments below.

(Click on cartoon to magnify)

Earlier on SAJAforum:

• Huckabee, other candidates, react to the Bhutto assassination news

See all items in the SAJAforum Cartoons/Comics collection

BHUTTO: Cartoon by Michael Ramirez

[ See SAJAforum collection of coverage, sources, resources about the Bhutto assassination ]

Today's editorial cartoon by Michael Ramirez is a play on both the Bhutto assassination and the San Francisco Zoo tiger attack that killed one man and put two brothers in the hospital.

When I first saw this in print this morning in the New York Post, it was in black-n-white and I missed the lettering in the tiger's stripes. Meanwhile, I am sure that Ramirez hadn't noted the South Asian connection to the tiger story. It isn't a Bengal tiger, but those brothers, it turns out, are desi.

Post your comments below.

CARTOON: Musharraf Humor in the Midst of the Emergency

[ONE-STOP SHOP: SAJAforum coverage of the Pakistan Crisis, including experts]

Some Musharraf-related humor in major U.S. media... First, a cartoon by Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Mike Luckovich in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (published on Nov. 21 and reprinted in the New York Times on Nov. 25).

And now, to a posting on "Laugh Lines," NYTimes.com's new blog ("from the editors of the Week in Review, offers one-stop shopping for the best humor on the web. Your participation can make it even better"). Here's the opening of "The General’s New Clothes — Must We Watch?":

Just asking, but have we really thought through the physical implications of what we’re repeatedly asking Pakistan’s President to do?

    “The President will call on President Musharraf to take off the uniform as he said he would do.”
    – Dana Perino, White House spokeswoman, Nov. 5

    ‘’My message was that we believe strongly in elections, and that you ought to have elections soon, and you need to take off your uniform.'’
    – President Bush, Nov. 7

And so on... Read the rest of the post here.

Yes, the emergency in Pakistan is serious, tragic business, but even through the worst disasters in South Asia (assassinations, cyclones, and more), locals have managed to find dark humor on occasion. Post your comments below.

CARTOON: Tom Toles on Natwar Gandhi's Troubles

Pulitzer Prize-winner Tom Toles is the popular editorial cartoonist of the Washington Post. Here's his Nov. 13, 2007, take on the controversy surrounding Natwar Gandhi, the chief financial officer of Washington, D.C. (read the SAJAforum coverage). In addition to commenting on Gandhi's troubles, it's a play on all the statutes of Mahatma Gandhi (the one in D.C. is below) Post your comments below.

The Mahatma Gandhi in Washington, D.C., opposite the Indian Embassy:

CARTOON: "Running Gags" on Yoga & President Bush

A cartoon from Rich Tenorio, a reporter-turned-cartoonist and his "Running Gags" strip. Read his blog, Opposite Fields, here. Click to magnify:

Also see: SAJAforum on "Is Yoga Really a Good Workout?